I'm sleeping in a caravan so I can put my cottage on Airbnb

Times

7 days ago

I am writing this by candlelight at the wobbly knee-high desk of a caravan situated in my friend's backyard. There is no electricity, no water and no toilet, so I have to use an old outside one. I am running a wi-fi hotspot off my phone. As the light fades I'll be forced to bed by 9pm, in an old sleeping bag I'm sharing with my dog, where I'll fall asleep dreaming of my lovely cottage — where I have my own toilet, my own bed and my own office, with an ergonomic chair in it.
I am spending the week in this absurd set-up not because I fancied a cheap off-grid escape (although using an outdoor loo is a novelty) but because I've rented my Somerset cottage out, like other mad middle-class people across the country this summer. In tourist hotspots families are fleeing to cash in on visitors, making themselves Airbnb-homeless and performing accommodation gymnastics as they look for somewhere to stay themselves.
As Airbnb has become ubiquitous — not to mention the source of anger over overtourism and second homes — so it has spawned another trend among a squeezed middle class looking for extra cash to pay climbing mortgages. When I was hoping to move to Cornwall I viewed one farmhouse with a long stretch of garden where, the estate agent explained, the owner erected a tent every summer to make thousands a week from renting the house. He didn't say quite what the Americans who rented it made of looking out to see the homeowner sleeping under canvas.
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A friend with a house on the coast sleeps in her car over summer, parking down lanes and showering at the gym because she can make thousands a week from renting her pretty cottage to tourists. Others go to crash with their parents or sleep on friends' sofas.
I will be rotating between friends across the country who are happy to put me up on their sofas or in their spare rooms in exchange for some extra childcare during the holidays. As well as coming back and forth to the off-grid caravan, I'll be borrowing a tent for week or travelling whenever I can. After all, if I can make a rental of my own cottage coincide with my holiday, I'll have covered the cost of it.
A family I know in Gloucestershire with a large beautiful house that rents for more than £400 a night take themselves off to a single hotel room for a week when they rent it. Another very wealthy family I've heard about, with a gorgeous old manor house in Devon that they lease to tourists for thousands during peak summer season, stay with their rather less wealthy relatives, relocating their pedigree dogs and custom Land Rovers to a council house in the suburbs.
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I have heard about a woman who moves to a cramped new-build around the corner from her Instagram-gorgeous north London cottage when she lets it out over the summer, and another with a stunning East End townhouse she vacates to sofa-surf with friends.
Ophelia, a photographer, has spent summers renting out her flat in Hackney while she goes back to her mum's in Suffolk, often popping back to London for work on day trips or hauling her things across town. 'I remember I stayed with one of my friends around the corner once while I rented my flat out in Hackney, dragging my clothes and all my photography equipment down eight flights of stairs so I could crash on her sofa for a week,' she says.
The playwright P Burton-Morgan is renting out the family home in rural Somerset for three weeks back-to-back over summer to fund a forthcoming theatre tour. The plan is sofa-surfing between different friends, family and even former parents-in-law to make it work.
'It's a precarious juggle of friends with kids doing sleepover swaps, generous family members and then people we vaguely know who seem sympathetic. I try to rotate between friends so no one gets too bored with us. And find ways to reciprocate, like doing some gardening. Parents in the creative industries have always scrabbled around in this kind of gift-economy way, it's just more of that dialled up a notch. We'll probably run out of willing hosts soon, but while it's still sunny there's always camping.
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'I am in the process of converting my shed so I can sleep in it and rent out the house. You just go, 'At what point is the tail wagging the dog?''
Others agree that the fallout of Airbnbing the family home isn't always worth it. 'It was a nightmare,' one person tells me, recounting how they rented out their beautiful home to a group who threw a huge party. 'The neighbours complained, they left empty bottles of booze everywhere and vomit in the children's bedrooms.' Once Ophelia rented her spare room to a man 'who thought I had gone out for the night, so I came back to find him in the sitting room sleeping with a girl'.
And then there's the toll on those friends you beg, borrow and steal from. A friend tells me of the time a couple they knew offered to house-sit while they were on holiday. It was only later that it transpired they had invited their extended family along too — all while making a quick buck renting out their own home.
When the candles run out in the caravan, I will have to stop writing and instead spend the evening pining for my home, reminding myself that, for all the inconvenience, I'm one of the lucky ones.